Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> The feature which, in my view, explains hostility
> to pacifism and kindred public displays of "weakness" is what I call
> DISCIPLINARIAN POPULISM (or DP). DP is a public spectacle of punishing,
> either literally or figuratively, someone branded as enemy of "the
> people" or rather a broadly defined group of people and exercised by an
> authority figure that purports to represent the views, interests and
> core values of that group. Michel Foucault aptly underscored the
> spectacular qualities of public executions in the middle ages, in which
> the offenders were subjected to elaborate tortures and death in front of
> the public. This is, perhaps, the purest form of DP.
>
This is not an explanation; it is a mere naming of what needs to be explained. After all, they didn't draw and quarter people for pacifism in the middle ages.
What explains DP? Unless you can ground the explanation in concrete social relations of a particular time and place you are merely providing substitutions for the old one-size-fits-all explanation of "Providence."
Carrol